I’ve just received news that my cousin and dear friend Muhammad Bakr Radwan has been detained in the Syrian capital Damascus following Friday’s demonstrations and accused of espionage. His latest tweet came during the early afternoon on March the 25th in which he indicated that he was at the Umayyid mosque in downtown Damascus witnessing tension.
Syrian newspapper Sana later reported that he has appeared on Syrian TV declaring that he has indeed received money from a Columbian journalist and is in fact collaborating with the Israeli intelligence from within Damascus.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg_uUDc4AZ4[/youtube]
Needless to say, this is all a complete falsehood, as he is an engineer working in a family business office for about nine months now and spends substantial time in Cairo. He is also a frequent traveler who had spent about a year backpacking through Central and Latin America, and therefore carries a passport with many visa stamps.
Radwan, as he is known amongst family and friends, holds a US passport, along with his native Egyptian one, and grew up between American compound Aramco in Saudi Arabia and Cairo, before moving to the US for high school and college. Upon graduating from Texas A&M University, he spent a few years working in Saudi Arabia before embarking on his Latin American adventure. He then spent a few years in Egypt and has only recently taken on a position as head of his family business’s branch in Damascus, specializing in data analysis for petroleum mining in the immediate region.
Radwan’s our second cousin and a very close friend who was extremely active in the #Jan25 revolution in Egypt, accompanying us on a daily basis and spending extensive hours at Tahrir square.
You can follow updates via the Facebook page created for him: http://facebook.com/free.radwan.
The Arab dictators fail to learn from each other’s mistakes and are resorting to old-fashioned techniques in an attempt to shoot down our revolutionary spirit. Little does Bashar el Asad know that he has only made it worse for himself, and together we will be victorious and liberate ourselves from corruption and brutality. Radwan will soon overcome what is but a minor bump in the road of a revolution the Arab world deserves. Y hasta la victoria, siempre!
25 comments